In Defense Of Failure, By Mark Anshel

Everybody makes mistakes. Failure can be a motivation, for it drives you to have a bigger passion for your desired goal. Success and failure have a relationship in which you can learn from your mistakes but later succeed.

I failed to reach the top of the rock climbing wall on the playground, and as a result, I have strived even harder to reach the peak of success in everything I do. Instead of becoming discouraged and disappointed in myself, I found a way to improve myself for my next challenge. Learning from my mistakes has molded me into an improved person while giving me the motivation to keep pushing forward. Failure has taught me the importance of learning from your errors and trying again, no matter how difficult it may be. Without lessons like these, I would not be the motivated, independent person that I am today. I will continue to fail and try again until I achieve my goal of reaching the

When I look at the word failure I didn’t see success. But that slowly changed as I read the book What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain Chapter four. Bain, for me and I’m sure many other, have changed our view point on failure being a bad thing. He instead expressed failure as an “opportunity to learn something.” (121) As infants we grow and develop, we learn to walk by falling down a couple hundred times, and we learn to speak by babbling. By trying to walk, and trying to talk, we may fail at first. As an infant, you cannot give up when you are face to face with failure. You must get up and try again to learn. In the book, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain he uses people’s experiences and research to explain why failure is an opportunity to learn something new, rather than seeing failure as something bad. He asserts “people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them.” (100) Failure is important. If we did not get up and try again as infants, we would not be where we are today.

Failure is something that all people encounter in their lives. In some situations failure can break a person or make a person, meaning a person can fail at something and just simply give up. Others will fail and that failure can give them the inspiration to try harder to one day achieve their goal. I'm the type of person to fail and work harder until I am content. As my championship baseball coach would say "What’s our motto? Never give up!"

Failure can be a very difficult thing to cope with. It can be something that makes you or breaks you. I have learned that failure is what defines a person; it shows your motivation to bounce back when things get rough. I have learned from my failure instead of dwelling on it and making myself weaker.

The short story, The Right to Fail by William Zinsser, explains how it is acceptable to fail and learn from one's mistakes and to not go down the path society has made socially acceptable. Zinner has a positive outlook on the concept of failing, he explains, “Success can be dangerous- you feel you know it all. I’ve learned a  great deal from my failures.” As life goes on, everyone may not succeed the same way or even succeed at everything they attempt to do, but it is important to learn from mistakes and continue moving forward and to find the path that works for you. Trying new things and failing or succeeding can open new doors to something better.

One major part of being unable to recover from failure is the inability to accept the fact that one has failed. Recognizing failure is important because without the recognition, there is no improving on a failed experience. In not recognizing failure as a problem, one is given a false view of themselves where they never fail, however in “The essential Guide for Recovering from Failure”, Guy Winch, Ph.D, shows the reader the problem with not recognizing or understanding the concept of failure.

Failure is widely viewed as negative. While this portrayal of failure is justified, it does not tell the whole story. Failure is a learning experience because it explains the errors made, and then the person figures out how to fix the mistakes. The way individuals respond to the failure is a great way to evaluate his/her character. There

In the story “The Right to Fail”, author William Zinsser, speaks about the necessity of failing in order to succeed. He argues about America is not granting its citizens the right to fail, someone who stays at home is more of a failure than the dropout kid, success can be dangerous, finally the younger generation understand failure better. Zinsser uses Thomas P.F Hoving and Fred Zinnemann who both became successful people to support his argument.

Failure is a process that can determine one’s character. It is a process needed in order to be successful. Through life people approach failure in various manners. For example, there are people who sulk, people who pretend, people who repeat, and

Failure is all around us, but so is success. Both result from one thing, setting goals. I set goals to achieve a sense of accomplishment when they are completed. From doing my homework every night to getting 100 percent on a test, goals help me focus my time on the activities that I must accomplish. Taking responsibility for your own failures is difficult. My failure makes me wonder what could I have done differently. I was forced to ask myself that question after Cross Country Districts Junior year.

The word “failure”, by definition, is the condition of not achieving the desired end or ends. However, this standard definition does not come close to summing up the countless other meanings of failure. Every person, regardless of status, color, or sex, has had to deal with this issue at least once in their lifetime. Even so, each person’s definition of it can vary depending on their personal experiences. The interpretations of failure may differ, but failure itself involves not putting forth effort, being a disappointment, or not succeeding in a task.

Failure is something that we cannot go through life without experiencing. The best thing about failure is that failure can be used as a great learning experience to improve upon things in our lives and career. Using failure as a learning tool is dependent upon the person and how they view it as well as how they use it. Failure is a matter of perspective and the lessons in failure are important aspects towards growth and development. If we did not experience failure there wouldn’t be opportunities for learning. Failure can teach us about ourselves as well as provide an understanding for our

Failure often times leads a person to feel helpless, disappointed and depressed. However,one should not allow this to set them back in trying to achieve the ultimate aim one has set out to do. Failure in the beginning can often be a powerful incentive to reassess one’s position in wanting to achieve the particular aims; to analyse whether the purpose is worth the trouble the person has to undergo and the whether the obstacles are surmountable.

Traditionally, failure is seen as a negative concept and is defined as lacking success. I, on the other hand, try to put a positive spin on everything in life. I see failure as an obstacle that is experienced by all, but it does not define an individual. Failure in essence will force an individual to be more receptive to their surroundings and actions and also will force an individual to mature. Looking back on my childhood years I can now pinpoint the areas where I failed and I can confidently say that I have grown and prospered due to those failures. The three major failures I have experienced were my attention deficit issues which affected my ability to succeed in school, my anti-social habit that I let consume my early years, and my